Scientific Deception by Monsanto/Bayer on Display with Retraction of Landmark Glyphosate Safety Study
As noted in the U.S. Right to Know article by Stacy Malkan on December 3, 2025, “A scientific study that regulators around the world relied on for decades to justify continued approval of glyphosate was quietly retracted last Friday over serious ethical issues including secret authorship by Monsanto employees—raising questions about the pesticide-approval process in the U.S. and globally.” This study, published in 2000, asserted that the weed killer glyphosate does not pose health risks to humans. Despite a wide body of scientific evidence that contradicts this study’s findings, both EPA and industry pointed to these results as further proof that glyphosate should continue to be allowed on the market.
The study was revealed as being ghostwritten by Monsanto employees, with the data based only on unpublished studies from Monsanto, ignoring data from studies that more thoroughly evaluated chronic toxicity and carcinogenicity. The recent retraction “came years after internal corporate documents first revealed in 2017 that Monsanto employees were heavily involved in drafting the paper,” which is one of many examples in which researchers and journalists have exposed “the many ways Monsanto manipulated the scientific record, influenced regulatory agencies, interfered in the peer-review process and used deceptive tactics to shape how regulators and the public view glyphosate,” Ms. Malkan writes.
Further coverage by Carey Gilliam in The New Lede calls attention to the issues behind the retracted study. As the article states: “The listed authors of the paper were three scientists who did not work for Monsanto—Gary Williams, [M.D. (professor emeritus at New York Medical College),] Robert Kroes, [PhD,] and Ian Munro, [PhD] and the paper was touted by the company as a defense against conflicting scientific evidence linking Roundup to cancer. The fact that it was authored by scientists from outside the company, from seemingly independent researchers, gave it added validity. But over the last decade, internal company documents that came to light in litigation brought by cancer victims have revealed that the paper actually was a product of three years of what one company official referred to as ‘hard work’ by several Monsanto scientists who helped craft the paper as part of a strategy Monsanto called ‘Freedom to Operate’ (FTO).”
